LefterEr.com
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Lefterer.com ~ Stoking the fire in your loins. I mean heart.
Description
In 1980 the United States Congress took and important step in grappling with the negative externalities associated with hazardous waste disposal; they passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), or Superfund. Whereas before, many hazardous wastes, such as polychlorinated biphenyls, DDT and arsenic, were disposed of with little regard for environmental degradation and endangerment of human health, now, the perpetrators of such toxic releases past and present are liable for their removal and or site remediation (if the pollution meets a minimum standard for toxicity). Arguably, there have been many inequities and inefficiencies in the functioning of the Superfund system thus far, but overall the program is judicious, has deterred continued pollution and has the potential to instigate remediation of many more contaminated sites that pose a risk to human health.
The hammer in CERCLA is the polluter pays provision. Under this provision, once a site has been added to the national priority list because of toxic contamination, the United States Environmental Protection Agency may require those who perpetrated said pollution to clean it up. To determine the liable parties, CERCLA promulgated a system of joint and several liability, whereby the arrangers of the pollution, the owners or operators of the land where and when the contamination occurred, the transporters of the hazardous waste to the site, and the current owner of the site are all potentially liable, singly or jointly, for the full cleanup costs. When liable parties cannot be found, the EPA itself can remediate the sites, primarily with funding from a special tax that has been levied (albeit on and off) on certain industrial chemical and oil producers.
Within this framework the EPA has by most accounts not managed Superfund very efficiently, and has been accused of wasting money (e.g. by contracting work to firms that overcharge them, and by choosing unnecessarily costly remediation methods), pinning liability on parties that had insignificant roles in site pollution, ordering the remediation of sites that pose little risk to human health over others that pose a significant risk, and preferentially focusing cleanup efforts on sites near wealthier areas. In fact, it is not only industry groups and individual polluters that decry these problems, others, such as former president Bill Clinton and Ted Williams, a contributing writer for Audubon, are just as quick to point out CERCLA’s flaws. However, implementation of CERCLA has led to the remediation of hundreds of sites and has assuredly stemmed the uncontrolled release of toxics into the environment. Without the polluter pays provision, many fewer benefits like these would be realized.
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- 1230 NE 133 St
- North Miami FL 33161 US
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